New York – Max Roach got his first musical break at age 16, filling in when Duke Ellington’s drummer fell ill in 1940. Those three nights spawned a career that would make the self-taught Roach the first jazz musician ever honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, or “genius grant.” His rhythmic innovations and improvisations defined bebop jazz.
His peers deemed him the greatest jazz drummer ever by the time he was 30. And after helping reinvent the genre, he became one of its loudest voices for civil rights.
The master percussionist died late Wednesday in a Manhattan hospital after a long illness. He was 83.
Roach played on seminal recordings for Blue Note Records with Ellington, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. Roach was elected to the Downbeat magazine Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Grammy Hall of Fame 15 years later. He won a $372,000 MacArthur grant in 1988.
“Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of bebop,” said fellow music legend Quincy Jones. “Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I’ve lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we’ll always have a part of him with us.”
Roach challenged his listeners by making music that connected the jazz of the pre-World War II era with the beats of the hip-hop generation.
“I try to show my students the correlation between hip-hop and Louis Armstrong,” he said. “That’s how well-rooted hip-hop is, coming out of an environment where people were denied any kind of cultural enrichment.”
The New Land, N.C., native was born on Jan. 10, 1924, and moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his family four years later. A player piano left by the previous tenants gave Roach his introduction to music.
But he was looking for another instrument while singing with the children’s choir at the Concord Baptist Church. Roach found a snare drum and was quickly hooked. His father gave the eighth-grader his first set of drums, and Roach was drumming professionally while still in high school.
Online: Hear recordings of Max Roach’s legendary drumming.
